“I think it does begin to open up pathways for young people, particularly into the tech sector, which is hard to get into,” said Tekinbaş.įor the platform’s most successful developers, Roblox is more than just fun: It’s a paying job. Katie Salen Tekinbaş, a game design professor at the University of California, Irvine, estimates that the virtual camp nonprofit Connected Camps she co-founded, which teaches kids how to build Roblox games, saw attendance jump to 10,000 over the summer, while previous years typically saw 2,000 attendees. And it has become a quasi-social-network for children. Schools, camps, Girl Scout troops and many other organizations use Roblox to teach kids coding. They play games such as digital hide and seek together and even kid-friendly horror games. Since its release in 2006, it has amassed millions of players who socialize and let their imaginations run wild. The entire platform is made up of user-generated games, many of them created by children and teens who have made millions of dollars through the platform. Roblox is essentially a digital sandbox where kids can build their own games – anything from a simulation of running a virtual restaurant to adopting a pet. The company declined interviews, citing a quiet period before the initial public offering. The company declined to say when it would debut detailed financial information, but it was recently valued at $4 billion this year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That’s why Roblox earlier this month filed confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. Roblox is big business: It surpassed $2 billion in lifetime revenue just from mobile players last week. In July, gamers spent 3 billion hours playing Roblox, twice as much time as in February. During the pandemic, kids flocked to Roblox to throw virtual birthday parties and other in-game events that were no longer as safe to hold in-person. About 75% of American children ages 9 through 12 play Roblox regularly with friends, according to the company. If you’re a tween, there’s a very good chance you’re playing Roblox. Video games are having a moment during the pandemic, perhaps none more so than an oddball create-your-own game sandbox called Roblox.

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